Enhancing Cognition with Video Games: A Multiple Game Training Study

Abstract

BackgroundPrevious evidence points to a causal link between playing action video games and enhanced cognition and perception. However, benefits of playing other video games are under-investigated. We examined whether playing non-action games also improves cognition. Hence, we compared transfer effects of an action and other non-action types that required different cognitive demands.Methodology/Principal FindingsWe instructed 5 groups of non-gamer participants to play one game each on a mobile device (iPhone/iPod Touch) for one hour a day/five days a week over four weeks (20 hours). Games included action, spatial memory, match-3, hidden- object, and an agent-based life simulation. Participants performed four behavioral tasks before and after video game training to assess for transfer effects. Tasks included an attentional blink task, a spatial memory and visual search dual task, a visual filter memory task to assess for multiple object tracking and cognitive control, as well as a complex verbal span task. Action game playing eliminated attentional blink and improved cognitive control and multiple-object tracking. Match-3, spatial memory and hidden object games improved visual search performance while the latter two also improved spatial working memory. Complex verbal span improved after match-3 and action game training.Conclusion/SignificanceCognitive improvements were not limited to action game training alone and different games enhanced different aspects of cognition. We conclude that training specific cognitive abilities frequently in a video game improves performance in tasks that share common underlying demands. Overall, these results suggest that many video game-related cognitive improvements may not be due to training of general broad cognitive systems such as executive attentional control, but instead due to frequent utilization of specific cognitive processes during game play. Thus, many video game training related improvements to cognition may be attributed to near-transfer effects.

Enhanced visual short-term memory in action video game players

“…Training studies, in which nongamers are recruited and randomly assigned to train on action video games or a control game, are typically used in this literature to avoid self-selection biases that might be at play in real-world AVGP and NVGP groups. Notably, although Boot et al (2008) did not find a training effect on VSTM after 21.5 h of training, a more recent study suggests that 20 h of action video game play is sufficient to improve VSTM, as evidenced by increased change detection performance relative to a control group (Oei & Patterson, 2013). Although the present study cannot attest to the causal effect of action video game play on VSTM, these mixed findings from training studies warrant further investigation into the relationship between action video game play and VSTM performance.…”

“Shall We Play a Game?”: Improving Reading Through Action Video Games in Developmental Dyslexia

“…A training with AVG can produce significant increases in AB performance compared with those obtainable with a NAVG training ( [97,127], but see [128]). …”

Reevaluating the effectiveness of n-back training on transfer through the Bayesian lens: Support for the null

“…Although numerous studies show apparent transfer effects to measures of general cognitive abilities (Chein & Morrison, 2010;Oei & Patterson, 2013), many other studies fail to yield positive results (e.g., Rode, Robson, Purviance, Geary, & Mayr, 2014;Sprenger et al, 2013). The lack of consensus across individual studies is striking and raises many questions about the robustness of the effect as well as how moderator variables may determine the boundary conditions under which training reliably leads to improvements in untrained general cognitive abilities.…”